Movie theaters are just unpleasant. I’m sorry, but they’re dirty, inconveniently located out of town, full of people you don’t know, and littered with overpriced popcorn. They’re not even a social experience: you get thrown out for talking to your friends in the middle of a movie!

Short Throw 3D Projector

IMAX 3D movies are widely regarded as the best 3D movie theater experiences you can get, but outside of simply having a big screen, there’s nothing unique about the 3D technology that makes it especially better than anything you can get at home – they’re just really high resolution, projected on to a really big screen. Of course, an IMAX screen needs to be really big and high resolution – because you’re sitting so far away from it.

Getting a relatively large screen from a consumer projector has been difficult in the past, where projectors would require a long throw distance of sometimes twice as far as the image size you wanted (or more) – so a 2-meter image would require the projector to be placed four meters or more from the screen. I don’t know about you, but my living room certainly isn’t that big, restricting a satisfyingly large image size to the realm of classrooms and conference halls (which again, you’d be sitting so far away from anyway!)

A short throw projector will give you a huge image from a short distance. The only reason I can’t fill the entire wall is because the radiator is in the way.

Don’t forget to pick up a four pairs of decent 3D shutter glasses too. When the image is the size of your entire wall and you’re sitting just a meter or two away from it, the immersion is just as good as an IMAX.

“But IMAX is 4K!”, you cry. Fair enough – we aren’t quite at the stage of affordable 4K projectors yet (unless $3,700 is affordable for you), but it’s a small sacrifice for bringing the movie theater experience to your comfortable living room.

Speakers, Speakers Everywhere

There’s an awful lot of engineering and sound design that goes into the IMAX experience, and I’m not going to pretend you can replicate it at home – you can’t. IMAX movie theaters have speakers in the ceiling, for Heaven’s sake – which they affectionately call “the voice of God”. Soundtracks are remastered to take advantage of this.

Nonetheless, you can get something that still sounds really good – and if you’re one of the people who thinks IMAX movies are too loud anyway, then having control of the sound level because it’s in your own living room could be regarded as a blessing in disguise.

IMAX movies are the same as regular movies, they just turn the sound up way too loud.

The great thing about speaker systems is that there’s a product for every budget, starting at less than $400 for a decent 7.1 Onkyo complete surround sound system, which includes an amplifier / receiver.

Most Blu-ray discs are encoded for 7.1 systems now, but even if your source isn’t (Netflix, for example, is mostly 5.1), the sound processing algorithms in the amp can fill in the gaps, so it’s not like you’ll be left with two speakers that don’t do anything. Check out this guide from Klipsch on where to place all those speakers.

Rather than adding more audible bass to your existing surround sound system, the energy is transferred kinetically to your seat. I’ll admit: it sounds ludicrous, and silly. But it works. It enhances immersion; it feels like you are there. And this is one aspect of the IMAX experience that you can in fact replicate perfectly.

You’re basically just strapping a speaker to the chair frame, driving it with an amp, into which you feed the audio from your regular surround amplifier via a low-pass filter. The filter ensures only bass gets through, otherwise you start “feeling” voices, which is apparently not so pleasant.

If DIY isn’t your thing, the ButtKicker brand is the most popular ready made product – a ButtKicker set designed for the home theater complete with amplifier will set you back under $700 – but snap them up quick as they’re in high demand. It’s easy to install and non-destructive: just slot the base plate under one of the legs of your sofa. Being blown up has never felt so good.

3D Blu-ray Player

You can pick up a bog-standard 3D HD Blu-ray player for as little as $60 nowadays, but I don’t recommend it. If you don’t already have a game console – and since you’re spending a good chunk on an incredible projector and sound system – consider buying either the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One instead of a dedicated Blu-ray player. As of last year, both are capable of 3D Blu-ray playback; they weren’t at the time of initial launch, limiting their use in home theaters.

IMAX At Home

Aaaaand that’s how you get a not-quite-authentic-but-still-pretty-darn-good IMAX-like experience in your living room. Of course, this isn’t limited to just movies: gaming on a big screen with louder than life surround sound is incredible too, especially when you can feel your butt getting kicked playing Call of Duty.

Do you have any other suggestions for getting the IMAX-like experience at home? Or are you still convinced nothing compares to actually going to the cinema? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Pete

July 5, 2016 at 1:29 pm

Hello

I have been setting up a home theater with a st projector and surround sound my screen is around 140 diagonal it looks awesome the animated movies look great i call it peter plex hardly turn on my 50 inch lcd any more it will look even better when more sources are in 4k my reciever will up convert but buggy been a pleasure doing it hanging curtains on side to suck up sound wash from bare walls have fun pete

Yes we can create great 1080p 3d picture at home, but nothing can beat cinema sound after you listen Dolby ATMOS. ATMOS requires 50 to 64 speakers all around you unlike IMAX, AURO or 7.1 and each speaker is capable of creating distinct sounds. ATMOS can only be enjoyed in big halls.

IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation and developed by Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor, Robert Kerr, and William C. Shaw.

I'd say, it's a worthwhile investment of one's time to install a few speakers in the ceiling. They're not overly expensive and if one doesn't feel comfortable with wire-concealment, then there are bluetooth speakers, but they can be a bit pricey, I think.

I like the idea and explanation of the 'seat-shaker' - so easy to implement and would definitely add to the overall experience without overloading your (and your neighbours) ears ;-)

My question here is what the screen size/ratio would be needed to be considered IMAX. I have projected a 101" screen while sitting at approximately 6 feet. I have enough room with some rearranging to get a screen size of 120", although I doubt I will invest in doing this now I at least wanted to get an idea of the ratio etc.

IMAX-BLOG: IMAX 101: Theatre Geometry (Video)* says the screen should take up 70 horizontal degrees of vision.
You can use the Screen Density Calculator : NVIDIA Automotive* to find your fov with your set up.

*I don't think I can share links here, but you can google these and it should be the first result.

James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence, and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. He's the lead developer of MakeUseOf, and spends his free time playing VR paintball and boardgames. He's been building PCs since he was a kid.